I inhabit a skywatcher’s paradise.
Here in the Sonoran Desert, when the sun slips behind the Tucson Mountains, we click off the lights and gaze upward at a familiar yet mysterious carnival of celestial bodies. Night after night, fireflies of cosmic luminescence connect us to the universe, filaments affirming our planetary existence.
The first dark sky ordinance was passed in Tucson in 1972, the year of Apollo 17, and the International Dark Sky Association was founded here in 1988. I have yet to meet a local who doesn’t recognize the name Kitt Peak, shorthand for the observatory located 56 miles southwest of the city. Established in 1958, Kitt Peak National Observatory is located on Tohono O’odham (“desert people”) land.
As Kitt Peak reveals, our mountains are also observatories, hybrids of visuality and geology and hope. They are interchangeable portals to another dimension, geologic windows. The word ventana is widely used here to describe streets, schools, lodges, and topographical features. We like to see in the dark, perhaps because we do not want to be in the dark, epistemologically speaking. Amateur astronomers and recreational philosophers, we anchor ourselves in time and space.
(But dark streets can lead to dead pedestrians. The newscaster says, “A car has hit a person on the northwest side.”)
From my patio, the Big Dipper hangs in the northwest over the Santa Catalina Mountains. It swings much lower in the winter months, sometimes playing peekaboo behind Finger Rock and dropping down toward Oro Valley. I fret when I am unable to see Ursa Major; I feel unmoored and even a little bit frightened. A descendant of Vikings, I need to know where the stars are (even if I cannot name them all). They are location technologies by which I map myself like an ancient mariner.
An earthy Virgo, daughter of Astraea, bringer of the Golden Age (still to come), I crave the known constellations: the dippers and animals and mythological beasts – not to mention the sun, the moon, and our neighbor planets – that enable my twenty-first century existential plotting. The twinkling canopy is my security blanket, wrapping me in (the illusion of) certitude.
But here there be monsters.
There are interior constellations by which we map ourselves, too. Recently, a tiny new constellation was discovered. This one is not dangling in the night sky above the ferociously beautiful Sonoran Desert that I call home. Rather, it is inside a terrestrial body, my own. This emergent constellation lurks quietly, stealthily in my left breast. It is an unidentified object at rest.
Where telescopes look up and out across far distances toward unreachable destinations, mammography looks down and in across near distances. It is intensely intimate – close enough to touch – and very personal. Mammography is a location technology for identifying and marking cells and women. And often, it marks the politics of health care, too.
In mammography, the breasts are flattened between rigid plates in a strange, disconcerting, and occasionally painful choreography of bodies, technologies, radiation, and fear. Aerial dance training is useful, as is yoga; one’s head can be placed at extremely odd angles to one’s neck and shoulders. Arms may be deployed trapeze-like to grip the machine, enabling breasts (one at a time, please) to remain captive long enough for a good shot.
Pictures are taken and retaken, interpreted and discussed. Messages are sent first to physicians and then to anxious patients. Very often, the “all clear” is sounded. But this year, for the first time since the Flattening began for me, things are Not Normal. Because of the constellation, I have fallen outside the curve. An aberration is growing in my left breast, and a disquiet seeps through my mind.
“No suspicious masses, calcifications or other significant abnormalities are seen in the right breast. On the left, grouped faint calcifications are present in the slight superior aspect of the breast far posteriorly, appreciated only on the MLO view…Left breast calcifications as described, for which further evaluation with magnification views is recommended. The patient will be contacted to schedule the additional imaging.”
I was contacted. Another round of acrobatics and ionizing radiation and pictures and anxiety. Then, a few weeks later…
“Magnification views of the left breast were performed, demonstrating grouped amorphous calcifications located superiorly and posteriorly in the breast. These are visualized only on the true lateral view, likely due to their far posterior location…Impression: Indeterminate calcifications in the left breast as described, for which further evaluation with stereotactic vacuum assisted core needle biopsy is recommended.”
And there it is: a biopsy.
Here there be monsters.
The thing is, the radiographic images were lovely. Like looking at a picture of the night sky above Tucson. My breast appeared as a small mountain peak tilted on its side, laced through with threads of diaphanous tissue, striated muscle shadowed along the back wall. Singular shards of calcium shone throughout like miniature gems. And the “suspicious” area resembled a small, swirling Milky Way of stars and intergalactic matter in wispy shades of black, gray, and white.
I stared at the images for a long time, trying to orient myself. Mostly, I was stunned. We have no family history of breast cancer. My other mammograms had all been normal. I eat well (little to no meat for decades, lots of crucifers), do not smoke, and drink only moderately (okay, I’m lying; I do drink a lot of wine). I could exercise more often than I do, and I’m trying to minimize stress in my life. But overall, I am – or have assumed myself to be – relatively healthy.
With the “mammo” providing a translation, the newfound constellation in my left breast was telling me a different story. It was reminding me in its unexpected beauty and presence in my body that there is a new normal. That my curious illnesses of the past two years – shingles, TMJ, heart palpitations, head colds – may have been harbingers of something more patterned, somatic manifestations of grief and stress, signifiers of age, and a warning to take heed.
Breasts are sometimes imagined as canaries in the coalmine. With their fatty tissues, glands, and ducts, breasts efficiently sponge toxins from the dirty world around us, polluting our entire bodies (and the bodies of our infants when we nurse). Chlordane, DDT, hexachlorobenzene, PCBs, mirex, toxaphene, dioxins and furans, heptachlor, and more – these difficult-to-pronounce synthetic chemicals migrate from soil, water, and air into our flesh, blood, bones, and cells. We are hazardous waste zones of our own making.
(Anthropocene: “a new geological epoch…we are changing life’s support systems”)
If gazing up at the night sky anchors me and reminds me of my place in the universe, then mammography has unmoored me. The creamy swirls and glittering fragments of calcium in my left breast are not (yet) a window to existential knowledge; only to the next step on the diagnostic ladder. From Flattening we will progress to Piercing, a slender biopsy needle the channel through which my cells will travel. The cells will be normal, or not. The biopsy will hurt, or not. I will be scared, or not.
And in this liminal space of the as-yet-undiagnosed, I wonder: Will I be among the one in eight?
At present, I am unable to map myself. I am in the dark.
This is what the body does.
Here in the Sonoran Desert, when the sun slips behind the Tucson Mountains, we click off the lights and gaze upward at a familiar yet mysterious carnival of celestial bodies. Night after night, fireflies of cosmic luminescence connect us to the universe, filaments affirming our planetary existence.
The first dark sky ordinance was passed in Tucson in 1972, the year of Apollo 17, and the International Dark Sky Association was founded here in 1988. I have yet to meet a local who doesn’t recognize the name Kitt Peak, shorthand for the observatory located 56 miles southwest of the city. Established in 1958, Kitt Peak National Observatory is located on Tohono O’odham (“desert people”) land.
As Kitt Peak reveals, our mountains are also observatories, hybrids of visuality and geology and hope. They are interchangeable portals to another dimension, geologic windows. The word ventana is widely used here to describe streets, schools, lodges, and topographical features. We like to see in the dark, perhaps because we do not want to be in the dark, epistemologically speaking. Amateur astronomers and recreational philosophers, we anchor ourselves in time and space.
(But dark streets can lead to dead pedestrians. The newscaster says, “A car has hit a person on the northwest side.”)
From my patio, the Big Dipper hangs in the northwest over the Santa Catalina Mountains. It swings much lower in the winter months, sometimes playing peekaboo behind Finger Rock and dropping down toward Oro Valley. I fret when I am unable to see Ursa Major; I feel unmoored and even a little bit frightened. A descendant of Vikings, I need to know where the stars are (even if I cannot name them all). They are location technologies by which I map myself like an ancient mariner.
An earthy Virgo, daughter of Astraea, bringer of the Golden Age (still to come), I crave the known constellations: the dippers and animals and mythological beasts – not to mention the sun, the moon, and our neighbor planets – that enable my twenty-first century existential plotting. The twinkling canopy is my security blanket, wrapping me in (the illusion of) certitude.
But here there be monsters.
There are interior constellations by which we map ourselves, too. Recently, a tiny new constellation was discovered. This one is not dangling in the night sky above the ferociously beautiful Sonoran Desert that I call home. Rather, it is inside a terrestrial body, my own. This emergent constellation lurks quietly, stealthily in my left breast. It is an unidentified object at rest.
Where telescopes look up and out across far distances toward unreachable destinations, mammography looks down and in across near distances. It is intensely intimate – close enough to touch – and very personal. Mammography is a location technology for identifying and marking cells and women. And often, it marks the politics of health care, too.
In mammography, the breasts are flattened between rigid plates in a strange, disconcerting, and occasionally painful choreography of bodies, technologies, radiation, and fear. Aerial dance training is useful, as is yoga; one’s head can be placed at extremely odd angles to one’s neck and shoulders. Arms may be deployed trapeze-like to grip the machine, enabling breasts (one at a time, please) to remain captive long enough for a good shot.
Pictures are taken and retaken, interpreted and discussed. Messages are sent first to physicians and then to anxious patients. Very often, the “all clear” is sounded. But this year, for the first time since the Flattening began for me, things are Not Normal. Because of the constellation, I have fallen outside the curve. An aberration is growing in my left breast, and a disquiet seeps through my mind.
“No suspicious masses, calcifications or other significant abnormalities are seen in the right breast. On the left, grouped faint calcifications are present in the slight superior aspect of the breast far posteriorly, appreciated only on the MLO view…Left breast calcifications as described, for which further evaluation with magnification views is recommended. The patient will be contacted to schedule the additional imaging.”
I was contacted. Another round of acrobatics and ionizing radiation and pictures and anxiety. Then, a few weeks later…
“Magnification views of the left breast were performed, demonstrating grouped amorphous calcifications located superiorly and posteriorly in the breast. These are visualized only on the true lateral view, likely due to their far posterior location…Impression: Indeterminate calcifications in the left breast as described, for which further evaluation with stereotactic vacuum assisted core needle biopsy is recommended.”
And there it is: a biopsy.
Here there be monsters.
The thing is, the radiographic images were lovely. Like looking at a picture of the night sky above Tucson. My breast appeared as a small mountain peak tilted on its side, laced through with threads of diaphanous tissue, striated muscle shadowed along the back wall. Singular shards of calcium shone throughout like miniature gems. And the “suspicious” area resembled a small, swirling Milky Way of stars and intergalactic matter in wispy shades of black, gray, and white.
I stared at the images for a long time, trying to orient myself. Mostly, I was stunned. We have no family history of breast cancer. My other mammograms had all been normal. I eat well (little to no meat for decades, lots of crucifers), do not smoke, and drink only moderately (okay, I’m lying; I do drink a lot of wine). I could exercise more often than I do, and I’m trying to minimize stress in my life. But overall, I am – or have assumed myself to be – relatively healthy.
With the “mammo” providing a translation, the newfound constellation in my left breast was telling me a different story. It was reminding me in its unexpected beauty and presence in my body that there is a new normal. That my curious illnesses of the past two years – shingles, TMJ, heart palpitations, head colds – may have been harbingers of something more patterned, somatic manifestations of grief and stress, signifiers of age, and a warning to take heed.
Breasts are sometimes imagined as canaries in the coalmine. With their fatty tissues, glands, and ducts, breasts efficiently sponge toxins from the dirty world around us, polluting our entire bodies (and the bodies of our infants when we nurse). Chlordane, DDT, hexachlorobenzene, PCBs, mirex, toxaphene, dioxins and furans, heptachlor, and more – these difficult-to-pronounce synthetic chemicals migrate from soil, water, and air into our flesh, blood, bones, and cells. We are hazardous waste zones of our own making.
(Anthropocene: “a new geological epoch…we are changing life’s support systems”)
If gazing up at the night sky anchors me and reminds me of my place in the universe, then mammography has unmoored me. The creamy swirls and glittering fragments of calcium in my left breast are not (yet) a window to existential knowledge; only to the next step on the diagnostic ladder. From Flattening we will progress to Piercing, a slender biopsy needle the channel through which my cells will travel. The cells will be normal, or not. The biopsy will hurt, or not. I will be scared, or not.
And in this liminal space of the as-yet-undiagnosed, I wonder: Will I be among the one in eight?
At present, I am unable to map myself. I am in the dark.
This is what the body does.
Monica J. Casper, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Inclusion in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona, has published six books and numerous articles, is co-editor of TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, and is a managing editor of The Feminist Wire. Her creative writing has appeared in Mojave River Review, Slow Trains, Vine Leaves, The Linnet’s Wings, and elsewhere. Born and raised in the Midwest, she currently resides in Tucson with her partner, daughters, a very smart rat, and two canines. For more information, visit www.monicajcasper.com.